


mist and smoke

by bombshells



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ancient curses, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Slow Burn, Suspense, i make up a bunch of rules for the spirit world, some gothic horror elements, very loose beauty and the beast au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28203171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombshells/pseuds/bombshells
Summary: Katara’s people have always had the good sense to steer clear of the Forest: the haunted, misty place known to be a liminal space between the human and spirit worlds. However, during a cruel and merciless winter, her father goes missing when he ventures into its depths to find food for their village. Refusing to believe he is dead, Katara dons an old disguise and sets out to find him, only to discover that he is a prisoner of the angry, vengeful Blue Spirit.
Relationships: Katara & Yue (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 61





	1. one

_Each winter_ , Katara thinks, _is crueler than the one before it_.

She moves closer to the fire, exposing her gloved palms to the weak, struggling flames. She cannot feel much of her body. Next to her, her nephew sniffles.

“When are they coming home?” he says, a bit pitifully, hugging himself. It has the makings of a whine, but Katara lets him have it; he is missing his parents, who disappeared along with her father into the Forest to try and bring something of substance for them to eat. Katara remembers watching their backs fade into the darkness as they walk away, and shudders. Whether it is from fear or from the cold, she does not know.

Everyone knows that only a fool would enter the Forest, the place between their world and that of the spirits. It is rare that people come out of there alive – let alone sane. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and their village will starve otherwise.

 _Don’t think about it,_ Katara tells herself.

She tries for a winning smile, but in truth, she knows she has none of Sokka’s warm humor or Suki’s quiet patience, and she knows that Silla is painfully aware of this.

“Any day now,” she reassures him anyway.

Silla huddles closer, cold and scared.

“Would you like some more stew?” she tries to coax him, even though she knows their “stew” is little more than boiled seaweed and the remains of a shriveled sea prune. Their family would not have disappeared into the mist if they had had more to eat.

Silla shakes his head and huddles closer. Katara obligingly lifts her arm, and he slips underneath it. She strokes his wavy dark hair, so much like hers. She sees so much of herself in him that it hurts, sometimes.

“Would you like to see my magic?” she tries. She doesn’t like calling her waterbending that, but it feels like a more fun word, a more whimsical one; and calling it “magic” dredges up the memory of Sokka, a memory both of them need right now to warm them more than their feeble fire can.

Silla looks up at her with his mother’s big brown eyes and nods. With a smile, Katara raises her hands, and an arm of stew rises up, waving at Silla like a friend. He watches, entranced. He is much too young to bend, but Katara hopes that he will, someday. The stew flies around, making swirling, roiling shapes – child’s play to her, really. She makes shapes with the stew, turns it to ice and then mist and then back to stew, makes it dance around in balls for Silla to try to catch with his chubby fingers. Chest clenching a bit, she thinks of what her old waterbending master Pakku would say.

“Years of training, wasted on performers’ tricks for a child,” he would have scoffed. He’d been a sour old man, and he and Katara’s grandmother had died last winter because they’d been weak with age- and starvation. Katara shakes her head, trying not to think about it, for her emotions have always been strong in her bending, and she needs to show restraint in front of Silla.

A good while passes, and Katara can sense Silla’s eyelids growing heavy. He protests only a little bit when she returns the stew to the pot, and lets her carry him to the furs they’d been sharing ever since his parents had gone on the hunting trip. He fits easily in her arms, and she holds him there, stroking his hair. Once she is sure that he’s asleep, she reluctantly leaves the warmth of the furs, tucks them tight around him with a kiss dropped to his forehead, and leaves their home to make her night rounds of the village.

The snow crunches beneath her boots, the only light to guide her the tiny lantern she’d taken from her home, the only sound the howling wind. It moans and screams like a dying animal, and she tries to tune it out.

She hears a sudden whoosh of movement near her, and whirls, ice daggers already ready, but she sees that it is one of the children, a little girl only slightly older than Silla.

“Mama sent me to get you,” the girl, a serious little thing named Ahnah, informs her.

Katara’s heart steadies, and she drops the daggers. “Is something the matter?”

“My dad’s worse,” Ahnah says, solemn.

“Alright, let’s go,” Katara says, and she and Ahnah trek in the direction of her family’s home. As the village’s only waterbender since Pakku’s passing, she was used to being pulled into fifty different directions. They needed her to build homes, to clear roads, to heal. They also needed her to protect the village from spirits that attacked in the night.

That was the reason why she had been left behind to watch Silla and the rest.

Ahnah’s home, like everyone else’s, is small, and not very warm, despite their best efforts. Katara shakes the snow from her boots and steps inside. Ahnah’s mother greets her, her forehead creased from worry. Katara thinks to scold her for sending out a child at night, when it’s so dangerous, but knows that the woman would not have done so if things were not urgent.

“How is he?” she asks.

“His fever has gotten worse,” Ahnah’s mother frets. “He’s gotten delirious. He won’t eat or drink. I’m afraid-”

Katara interrupts her, willing away memories of another fever that got worse until it never went away. “He’s going to be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

She steps further inside, nearest to the fire, where Ahnah’s father, swaddled in furs, is lying. He is fretful, twisting and turning, his breath labored. He had been sick with this illness for the past month, with ups and downs, but mostly downs.

Carefully, Katara peels the furs and his shirt away, laying a hand on his chest. She can feel the weight holding his lungs down, the infection ailing his already-weak body. She coats her hands in water and gets to work.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed, only that it does. When at last the man’s breathing evens and his temperature is down, she realizes it is past midnight, feeling the moon’s position.

“Thank you, Katara,” her patient’s wife offered with gratitude. “Please, stay and have something to eat.”

Katara cannot in good conscience take more of this struggling family’s meager food, so she declines, despite her rumbling stomach. “Thank you,” she says. “But I have to go make the rounds.”

“Of course,” Ahnah’s mother says. “Take care, Katara. We would be lost without you.”

Katara nods, with a smile, and leaves.

 _I know,_ she does not say. _I think about that every day._

For another two hours after that, she treks around their tiny village, checking on families, making sure she is not needed to lower fevers or ease pains. She checks on Silla, still sound asleep in her own home. She then travels in a circle around their village, eyes on the misty darkness beyond, looking for anything that could mean them harm. It has been years since a spirit has attacked them, but the memory is fresh and traumatic enough that Katara cannot afford a lack of vigilance.

It is as it usually is- crouching darkness, the meager light of the moon and what escapes people’s homes, the cold, the howling wind. When she makes her rounds, sure enough that all is as it should be, she goes back to her home, checks on Silla once more, and then sits outside, eyes on the uncertain horizon, hands wrapped around her struggling lantern for warmth. She knows she should probably go back inside and curl up next to Silla to get some sleep, but she can’t. It’s been too long since her family and the others had set out for the hunting trip, and her mind is restless.

They should have been back a week ago. That had been the plan. Katara had counted and re-counted the days.

She looks up at the moon, a not-quite full circle in the night sky. She had heard its spirit was one of a lost princess, who had left the mortal world to preserve the human one, sacrificing her earthly attachments in the process. Katara, as a rule, does not like spirits, but she has a feeling that this one is kinder than most- the moon, the one who lets her bend, the one who had once been human.

 _Guide them back to me,_ she says. _If you can hear me, guide them back home. I can’t afford to lose anyone else._

The chilled air is like sandpaper on her skin, stinging and burning. She could get sick like this. But she can’t stop looking out into the emptiness, imagining the hunting group as it comes back home.

Silla will have a nightmare in approximately an hour’s time, anyway. When that happens, she’ll curl up with him and sleep for good.

But for now, she sits and waits.

* * *

She’s shook awake by little hands, and sees Silla standing before her. He is not shivering or crying like he usually does when woken by nightmares, but there is an urgency about him that she does not understand. She realizes, with a jolt, that she had slept well through the night, and that the sun, weak as it is, had risen.

“What’s the matter?” she says.

“Mama and Papa,” he tells her earnestly. Behind him, she can see one of the young boys from the village, panting in his parka. He had obviously run here to tell them the news. “They’re home.”

Katara springs to her feet and brushes off the snow from her hair and shoulders. She suppresses a wild, uncontrolled laugh of relief. “Let’s go,” she says, both to Silla and the boy that had brought them the news. “Let’s go see them.”

They run. At some point, Silla’s little legs cannot keep up, so she picks him up and keeps going. She has to see them. She has to see them with her own eyes, to touch them and feel them, to know that they’ve come back to her, that they’re alive and breathing.

The world blurs for her. She is so emotional, so overwhelmed, that she does not remember how, by all logic, if they had come from whence they came, they should have entered the village through _their_ side of the village- they should have passed them by. But she dismisses the thought, simply running through the snow as fast as her legs can carry her, bending it away when it gets in her way.

In the distance, in the big tent they use for meetings, she can see a gathering of people, all focused on something in the middle. She runs faster.

Someone recognizes her, and people quickly clear a way for her to walk to the center of the gathering. There they are. The hunting party. Katara can see the hunters they’d sent out sitting or lying on the ground, many of them coughing or injured, being attended to by their families. She can see the pile of food and meat they have brought- enough, if handled with economy, to get them all through the winter.

She sees Sokka and Suki, sitting on the ground, bent with exhaustion. Silla throws himself from Katara’s arms and runs to them, launching himself into his parents’ arms.

“I missed you so much,” she hears Sokka whisper. He is uncharacteristically serious, squeezing his son in his arms like he is the last thing keeping him alive. “I’m sorry we were gone so long, buddy.”

Suki is silent, which piques Katara’s concern even more. It is unlike her. She simply rests her head on Silla’s arm and squeezes her eyes shut, like she is trying to forget something unpleasant. Katara finally reaches them, and Suki leans into Katara’s embrace with a type of fatigue that worries her. She seems reluctant to move much, and Katara realizes that her leg is held in a makeshift splint.

“You’re safe,” Katara says, her heart squeezing in pain at what they must have endured. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of your injuries. You’ll be back to normal in no time. What’s important is that you’re all safe.”

She hears Suki take a deep, shuddering sigh, muffling what feels alarmingly like a sob against Katara’s shoulder. In the years Katara has known Suki, she has never once seen her cry. This alarms her further. Just what, exactly, had they seen in the Forest?

“We got lost,” Suki begins, her voice weak with pain. “The Forest…it keeps changing. Space and time work differently there. That’s why- that’s why it took so long for us to come back. And the spirits…they can sense your fear. They chased us. We tried to fight them off. Sometimes, we could keep them away, or we could hide until the morning. But there was one…” Her voice trailed off, and she took another shaky breath, and fell silent.

Katara looks up and catches Sokka’s eye. He’s still holding Silla tight to his chest, his gaze a little unfocused. There is a splatter of dried blood at his temple, mixing with his hair, and deep mauve bruising blooming from around his left eye. She can tell, by the way his back muscles are tensed, that he is favoring one shoulder over the other.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Katara says. They have, no doubt, incurred the wrath of a thousand spirits by trespassing in the Forest so brazenly, and she must prepare herself. “I’ll ask Dad. Where is he?”

The air becomes colder. Suki buries her face further into Katara’s shoulder, almost like a child. Sokka inhales, long and slow, his eyes suddenly glassy.

“There was one spirit that always knew where we were,” Sokka said. “At some point…at some point, it was almost certain it was going to overtake us and win. Dad… he led it off. Taunted it so we could get away. I…” He swallowed, his entire form bent in shame and guilt and fear. “We never saw him again. We tried to look, but there was no sign of either of them.”

The information weighs heavy. Katara blinks, breathes, blinks again. Nobody says a word. Sokka looks to the ground, too devastated to meet her eyes once more.

Katara can see it so clearly. Her father, the chief, leading a spirit away, with no waterbending to aid him. Sokka, having to push him away and lead the others to safety instead.

She should have known better than to think that a risk this great would not have had its price.

The wind howls, and she can almost imagine her own voice howling with it.

* * *

She wants to scream and cry, but she can’t, not when Sokka and Suki and all the other hunters are falling apart from all they’ve seen and been through for the past month. She takes her emotions and stuffs them into a little ball, out of her reach, and focuses her energy on keeping the survivors of the hunting ordeal alive.

All the better. Because after a week of quietly fixing her brother and his wife’s bodies, she has come to the conclusion that her father is not, in fact, dead.

 _It’s a good thing nobody’s initiated Sokka as the new chief yet,_ she thinks, stoking a fire as Sokka and Suki help prepare dinner nearby. _It’s going to be awkward when Dad comes home._

She’s already made her mind up about it.

“What are you thinking about?” Sokka says, breaking her out of her thoughts. In the week since they’d come back and Katara had healed them, he and Suki had regained much of their strength and energy, although that old, haunted shadow still hovers over them like a dark cloud that will never fully dissipate.

“I’m gonna bring Dad back,” Katara says simply.

Sokka’s face darkens. “That’s not funny.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

She goes back to stoking the fire. She can feel Sokka and Suki’s eyes on her.

“What do you mean?” Suki says.

“I’m going to go find him and bring him back,” Katara repeats herself.

“Alone?” Suki says incredulously.

“Yes.”

Sokka’s voice is hard. “Katara, we were a group of twenty grown adults in that forest and we barely made it out alive. You can’t possibly be serious.”

Katara looks up and levelly meets Sokka’s eyes. “None of you could bend. You know I have a better chance with spirits than any of you.” She leans forward, and Sokka looks away, just for a millisecond. “You _know_ why.”

“You can’t risk it,” Sokka finally says. “We can’t lose anyone else from the village, Katara. Dad told me to keep everyone out of the Forest, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

“I’m not leaving him in there to rot!”

“You _have to!”_ Sokka says, his voice suddenly raised. They glare at each other. Silla watches, near the door, with wide eyes. Suki moves, as if to get between them.

“Guys,” Suki says, her voice quiet and stable. “You can’t afford to get like this. Calm down.”

Sokka closes his eyes for a moment and gathers himself. When he speaks, his voice is strained, lower. “The last thing Dad told me to do was to keep you safe.” Her heart clenching, Katara wonders, for a second, whether Sokka means the village, or just her. “If you’re not going to listen to me as your brother, then you’ll listen to me as your chief.”

“You’re not my chief yet,” Katara grits out. “My chief is in the Forest, and he needs someone to get him out.” She desperately fights angry tears. “He’s not dead. I _know_ he isn’t.”

She tries to forgive Sokka. She knows that he is not only in charge of his family, but in charge of an entire village. And right now, it is in their best interests for her to stay. She cannot afford to lose anyone else, but neither can he.

But she can never turn her back on someone who needs her. Her family least of all.

* * *

She lets one more night pass, letting Sokka think he has won their argument. Not a single one more, though. With every passing minute, her father is in deeper danger.

The second night, however, she tells Sokka and Suki that she’ll be making her rounds after they go to bed. She watches as they tuck Silla between them and gives them a meager smile as she walks out with the lantern. She stores the memory of Silla’s big brown eyes somewhere permanent, so it can warm her when it will get inevitably cold.

She makes sure everyone is as good as she can leave them. She heals hurts, eases pains, clears airways. She tries her best to give some relief to the injured veterans from the hunting party who will remain scarred for the rest of their lives. The hunting party is all…changed, after all. Despite their injuries, over the course of the past week, Katara had discovered that Suki and Sokka had gotten off relatively easy. Some of the people who had gone in the Forest refused to speak. Some could not focus their eyes. One man keeps insisting that he can see the dead. These people are harder to heal. The best she can do is take what physical pain they may have and soothe them to sleep. With each person she must put to rest, her heart twists in hatred for spirits’ cruelty even more.

_What right have they to toy with us like we are worth nothing?_

When all is said and done, the moon is high and full in the sky. She cranes her neck to look at it.

 _Keep my father alive,_ she tells the moon spirit. _Just a little bit longer._

Doing her best to be quick and quiet, she trudges to the old hiding place. It takes a little pacing to refresh her memory, but soon, she reaches the old spot where she had buried her disguise, near the hill where she and Sokka used to play as children. She crouches at the foot of the hill and bends the snow away, before bending it back into a large, sharp slab, and using it to hack into the hard, frozen earth.

It’s hard work, but the moon’s energy fortifies her. After an hour or two or three she finally finds the old woven box. In quick, silent movements, lit only by moonlight, she undresses herself, and redresses herself with the contents of the box. These clothes were made for warmer months, and Katara can achingly feel it. The cold bombards her from every angle, and it is only the moonlight, her natural resistance to cold as a waterbender, and her own resolve that keeps her from buckling to the merciless wind right then and there. With numb fingers, she dips them into the small pot of red paint, hoping that they do not shake too much as she paints her face and shoulders. After that is done, she slowly and methodically unbraids her hair, letting it loose. It provides a tiny buffer for her neck and shoulders from the chill. The final touch is the hat. The fabric hanging from its brim is rougher than she remembers, but it still blows with the wind.

It’s an old disguise, one her mother used to wear before her, to ward off invading spirits. The likeness of the Painted Lady. If one conducted themselves the right way - if one stayed calm, and regal, and righteous – one could convince a minor spirit to leave them alone. In the years since her mother’s death and Katara had taken on the disguise, she could even bend mist as well, to make her look even more ethereal.

Pretending to be a spirit is a dangerous game. A game that could save a village, and a game that could get mothers killed.

She has no time to waste. She puts her parka and her old clothes into the box and sets it back in the earth, bending ice over it to cover it. She lingers for a moment, wondering if this is the last she will see of her home. And then she leaves.

It is an hour’s trek to the Forest. In that time, Katara uses the hand that isn’t holding her lantern to rub her arm, trying to keep her limbs active enough to be able to bend at a moment’s notice, to avoid the frostbite that will surely befall her if she stays this cold for long. She is so engrossed in her task that she does not notice her path growing clearer and clearer, the air around her just ever so slightly warmer. When she does, she realizes she is bathed in moonlight.

 _So you are helping me,_ Katara thinks. Moonlight cannot warm her to the bone like sunlight would, but the thought of it does. She has at least one ally in this frightening war she is waging. _Guide me, then._

She puts her head down and soldiers on, guided by a lantern and her new, unlikely friend. When the mist around her becomes thick, she moves her arms in slow, roiling motions, and the mist parts for her like waves, pooling at her feet. The moonlight concentrates around her, illuminating her so that she looks almost divine. The moon is privy to her little act.

 _Even though she must know it is a transgression,_ Katara thinks, but she knows not to push her luck, and soldiers forward, trying not to think about it. It’s easy enough to think that the moon spirit is simply helping her out of kindness. But Katara knows enough about spirits to understand that it could easily just be some kind of sadistic trap.

Soon, almost without her noticing, trees surround her from all sides, and Katara knows, with some deep, hidden instinct, that she is now in a place where the rules of the world are not what they used to be. The snow is shallower here, the air slightly warmer- smelling strange and foreign, but also slightly, faintly familiar. Katara knows that smell, and it makes her shiver more than the ice ever could.

The silence is eerie. Katara can barely see anything that is not directly in front of her; the mist is too heavy. She wonders how the hunting party had stayed here for a month without going mad. She hopes she is not too late for her father, and presses further and further. In truth, she has no idea where she is going. She tries to look for tracks he or the hunting party may have left behind, maybe to retrace their footsteps, but this place operates by spirit rules. They could have been cleared away.

 _Don’t look at anything for too long,_ she reminds herself. _Move quickly. Do not linger._

It is so, so quiet. There is only ever the occasional crack of a twig, or rustle of a leaf. Distantly, sometimes, she can hear running water, but it’s muffled, like she’s in a dream. Sometimes she hears the call of a bird, but she does not look up to see it fly away – she only hears the flutter of its wings. The moonlight isn’t as strong here; it filters through the thick foliage, just barely lighting her path.

Only one thing is certain. Katara knows that this silent emptiness cannot be natural.

She is being watched.

 _Guide me,_ she thinks, looking up at what little moonlight has escaped the thick canopy of leaves above her. _Keep me safe._

Her breath comes in quick and short.

 _Hold yourself with confidence,_ she tries to coach herself, as she hears _something_ rustle nearby. _If you feel that you belong here, they will think you belong here, too._

One step further. Another step further. _I am here for my father. They will not hurt me if I do not let them. I am here for my father. They will not hurt me if I do not let them._

Another rustle. The tiniest gust of wind, almost like someone blowing next to her ear. Katara keeps walking, and dares not look behind her. She feels the faintest tickle at the back of her neck. Something playfully lifts the fabric of her hat, then quickly withdraws.

_They will not hurt me if I do not let them._

“Who is there?” she calls out, forcing her voice into steadiness. “Do not play games with me.”

Deep, deep silence. Suddenly, Katara realizes that the Forest has gone completely silent. No birds, no rustles, no water dripping from leaves. Not even the wind. It is suddenly warm. It is almost like a warning.

“Help!” a sudden cry rings out, and Katara’s heart stops. She knows that voice.

“Dad?” she cries out, dropping all pretenses. “Dad, where are you?”

“Help! Help me!” she had never heard her father so afraid. The fear in his voice is so visceral, she feels like sobbing. “Please!”

She breaks out running as fast as she can, panting, frantically bending the mist away. Her heart is beating impossibly fast, and she can hear the blood roaring in her ears. All the while, her father keeps screaming for her help, his terror mounting higher and higher, and hers along with it.

“Dad! I’m coming!” she calls out desperately. “Dad, where are you?”

She follows his screams, the nightmare stretching for an hour, or many hours, or days. It’s hard to tell. She is cold and hot then cold again, her lantern bumping rhythmically against her hip, clanking and creaking terribly. She nearly twists her ankle when she steps directly into a stream, and forces herself to stop so that she doesn’t trip and injure herself.

“Dad?” she calls. “Dad?”

“My daughter!” he calls, much closer than she’d thought. He is some ways in front of her, hidden in a circle of bushes. If she takes a few more steps forward, she could even be able to see him. His voice is hoarse and worn out. “Please, sweetheart, help me. My leg-it can’t move-” he pauses, as if in pain, and his voice lowers. “Something’s after me. We have to be quick.”

She raises her foot to step forward, then stops. She realizes that the bushes are not lit by the moonlight. They sit in baleful darkness, only reflecting the dying light of her lantern. A warning.

“Dad?” she says again, voice small. “Is that you?”

“Please,” her father – or what seems to be her father – begs. “Please, my sweet daughter.”

“If I am your daughter,” Katara insists, her voice wavering. “Then what is my name?”

It happens so quickly. Katara sees the blur in the corner of her eye and nearly wrenches her arm out of its socket as she bends almost the entire stream in its direction. A deep, animalistic hiss rings through the forest, and Katara _runs._

“My daughter,” her father’s voice laments behind her. She doesn’t look behind her, she doesn’t, she doesn’t. “Why are you leaving me behind?”

“Leave me alone!” Katara screams, forcing her legs to carry her faster. “Stop using his voice!”

She can hear the rustling tenfold now, like a thousand tiny legs scratching against bark and dirt at once, knows that _it_ is gaining on her, whatever _it_ is, and no, no, no, she will not die like this, she will not die here-

The moonlight shines on a tree up ahead, and Katara sprints to it because her life depends on it. The moonlight points to another tree, then another, and she does not know how she has been running so long – only that _it_ is still behind her, still gaining on her. Branches lash at her as she runs by, and tear gashes in her exposed skin, but she cannot stop. The mist begins to clear, and suddenly, she has broken through the trees and foliage and into a clearing. She hears a long, painful howl of defeat behind her, in the distance.

So she has left _its_ territory. That leaves the terrifying question of _whose_ territory she is in now. If it is enough to keep _it_ away, then this new place cannot be anything good.

She tries to register her surroundings as she catches her breath. This clearing is not a natural one. This bald spot, in the middle of the Forest, is the result of a fire. Katara sees that in the blackened grass beneath her feet, and in the crumbling palace before her.

It is unlike anything she has ever seen. The palace could have been grand, once upon a time. It had clearly been attacked by something, however, because one of its towers is burnt and blackened, its roof fallen in. In fact, most of the walls and windows are black with soot. A lot of banners hang from the roofs and balconies, but they are burnt and torn beyond recognition. This palace had been here for a very long time.

With a start, Katara realizes that it is _warm._ It is almost as hot as summer. There is not an inch of snow in sight.

Every instinct in Katara’s body tells her to run. The palace, however, is shining in the moonlight, and Katara knows that this was where she would find her father. Carefully, quietly, she walks forward, up the crumbling steps. She grabs the tarnished golden knocker on the doors. It is shaped like the head of a lionturtle. She knocks three times, loud and clear.

She waits for a long time, and nobody answers. _Maybe there’s nobody there._

She pushes the doors open. They give a great, heavy groan as she does so. The hall she opens into is deserted, her footsteps echoing within. The moonlight doesn’t reach here. She would be on her own from now on.

 _Thank you,_ she thinks, hoping the moon spirit will hear her.

With only her dying lantern to guide her, she picks a staircase to use and ascends, up, up, up. She dares not call out for her father, lest something else hear her. She simply walks as quickly as she dares, poking her lantern into dusty, empty rooms, to find nothing but rotting furniture.

Where the Forest had been silent save for rustles and birdsong, the palace is silent save for creaks and moans. _It’s like the entire place is in pain,_ Katara thinks, shivering.

As she explores further and further, she hears groans. Muffled, pained groans, like someone is holding a pillow to someone’s face. They are long, agonized, like the weeping of a mourner. She creeps closer.

“Please don’t be him,” she whispers. “Please.”

The groaning is loudest when she reaches a room at the end of the hall. It seems to be in time with creaks and moans of the palace itself. She pushes the door open, and sees, at the far end of the room, someone lying in the moth-eaten bed. The blue of his clothing is unmistakable.

“Dad?” she asks, voice high and reedy with fear.

The groans stop. There is rustling, and her father -for it has to be her father – turns away, like he is hiding. She finally reaches the bed.

“Dad, it’s me,” she says quietly, soothingly. Her heart is beating so hard, she can feel it in her throat. “It’s Katara. I won’t hurt you.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder and turns him to face her. It’s easy; his strength is practically gone. His head turns towards her, and for the second time that night, Katara’s heart stops.

Hakoda’s face is gone. In its place, _nothing._

Something high and loud repeats itself over and over again, and after a long time, Katara realizes that it is her own screaming. Her throat is raw, and she tastes blood in her mouth. It is so horrible. It must be a nightmare. She pinches herself, scratches the skin of her arms until they bleed, but she does not wake.

Something has _taken_ her father’s _face._

“Who did this to you?” she screams shrilly, but her father cannot answer, of course. He turns away again, not wanting her to see him. “Who did this?”

Her breath comes in rapid gasps, her shoulders heaving up and down. She wants to throw up. _Who did this who did this who did this who did this-_

“Trespasser,” a rasping voice says behind her, low with anger. Katara whirls. In the doorway, a dark figure stands, the light just not reaching his face. “This is not your realm. Leave, now.”

“I am the Painted Lady,” Katara somehow remembers to say, as confidently as she could, although she knew that she was too shaken to be convincing. “You do not command me.” With a strange, unexpected fury, she points an accusatory finger at him. “Did you take this man’s face?”

“I didn’t,” the figure says, taking a step forward. “But you are not the Painted Lady.”

“I am.”

“You aren’t,” he says scornfully. “You called that man your father. He is a human, and so are you.”

“I came to take him away.”

“You can’t. He trespassed.” The figure takes another step forward. “Besides. The minute he steps out of the Forest, he dies. No human can live long without a face.” Another step. “Now leave.”

“No.” Katara digs her heels into the ground. “I won’t!”

“Leave, before you regret this. You’ve already transgressed enough.”

“Show yourself!”

He steps into the light. He is dressed simply, in black, anonymous clothing. A pair of dao swords hang at his waist. His face, however, is covered with a clay mask- mask painted in the fearsome likeness of a spirit, in white and blue.


	2. two

He doesn’t look like a spirit. He looks like a man. But there is something about him that makes Katara’s skin crawl, and she takes a step backwards. Dust does not settle on him normally, like it does on everything else in this ashen palace. It twirls and barely glances against him, like it is courting him for a dance.

“Who – who are you?” Katara stutters, hating herself for it.

“That’s none of your concern,” the masked one spits out. “This is the last time I will say this. You’re trespassing on my property. Leave.”

Her faceless father groans behind her. “I’m not leaving without him.”

“He’s a lost cause anyway,” the masked one says. His voice is the slightest bit hoarse, like he has shouted often. “You have a lot of nerve, coming here, making demands, when you’re a pretender. The spirits would curse you for that.”

“Are you a spirit?”

“Just leave already. Your father’s as good as dead without his face.”

“How do I get it back?”

“You don’t. It was taken by the Stealer. Because he trespassed, _like you are.”_

And Katara suddenly feels herself tumble into rage. This…this _thing,_ lecturing her about trespassing and rules, acting like her father came into this cursed forest from hell just for the fun of it, that he had made some kind of mistake by providing for his village and protecting his people, acting like her father would never have stepped foot into their rotting forest if the spirits had not kept up the mist that kept prey away- she cannot stand it. She cannot stand the idea that even in the most vulnerable and blameless of positions, she is still to blame for her own suffering.

She stabs a finger at the masked one.

“If I am a trespasser, then you are a thief!” she yells at the top of her voice. “Stealing our food, stealing our lives, stealing my father. I am not leaving this spot without my father feeling healthy and righteous. Do what you want, but I will not leave. And if you send me back, I’ll come back, over and over again, and I’ll kill as many spirits as I want to do it!”

The masked one unleashed one of his swords, pointing it at her chin. “Take that back now, or you will summon them.”

“You don’t scare me,” Katara says with scorn, even though her heart is pounding and she is dangerously close to tears. The spirits had taken so much from her. They had taken her innocence, her youth, her safety. They had taken her brother’s smile and her grandparents’ lives. They had taken her mother. She will not lose her father to them, too.

“You still have time to flee with your life, you stupid girl,” the masked one hisses at her.

“I’m not a coward like you and your kind,” she says, revelling in the release of the insults. “I don’t hide behind the mist and the trees. If you want to kill me, kill me now. But I can kill you too, and I will if you don’t _give my father back.”_

The threat slices through the air, like a tangible object, and the ground shakes. Katara knows, now, that she has gone too far. She does not know who would have been listening, only that someone obviously has.

She hears the trees rustle outside, wind moaning through them like someone weeping for their fallen lover.

“You’ve done it now,” the masked one says, throwing his sword to the side. “I warned you. Now they’ll take it out on both of you.”

 _Oh, no._ In all her fury, she had forgotten that her father’s life lay within her hands, and that she had just thrown away any hope of saving it. She doubts that whatever spirit had taken his face would be inclined to return it after her little speech. _Oh, no._

A vague shape blows in from the open window, descending at her feet, into a vaguely human shape, one whose features she cannot make out. A baboon crawls up the wall and into the room at the same time, perching some ways behind her father with a snarl in her direction. More spirits flood in, until Katara thinks the room will burst with their sheer numbers. Animals, humans, creatures she cannot comprehend. She hears a horribly familiar scuttling nearby, and does not look in its direction. Above her head, the stone and wood shifts, almost of its own accord, letting a shaft of moonlight inside. It materializes into the shape of a lovely young woman dressed in flowing robes, her white hair floating softly across her face.

This must be the moon spirit. Katara is startled to realize that the girl looks even younger than she does. She opens her mouth to speak, but the spirit holds up a glowing hand, eyes wide in warning.

 _You have done enough,_ the girl seems to say with her eyes. Despite herself, Katara feels a twinge of shame, for undoing all of the moon spirit’s hard work at keeping her alive.

“Why are we here?” a spirit says drowsily, from one corner.

“A human thinks herself above us,” the baboon says, with a haughty look in her direction. “She trespasses.”

“Just make her leave,” the masked one says with bitterness. “I tire of this whole affair.”

“Humans think they are so clever,” the baboon goes on. “Thinking they can trick us and threaten us. As if we could fall for your pathetic little games-”

“You fell for it before, didn’t you?” Katara blurts out without thinking.

The moon spirit shakes her head and the baboon unleashes a fearsome roar in her direction. Her father, meanwhile, lay motionless on the bed, perfectly still, as if he knows the tenuousness of their plight.

“I should rip your head from your neck,” the baboon growls. “I should feed your corpse to the forest.”

“Leave her face for me,” whispers a horrible, crawling voice from behind her, and Katara can feel every hair on her body stand on end.

She doesn’t turn around. “Are you the one who took my father’s face?”

“Yes. It is my favorite by far. I caught him in a most beautiful expression – turn around and take a look.”

She almost does – she has some plan in her mind of snatching it back -but the masked one suddenly says, as if involuntarily, “Don’t.”

“Why ruin this for me, O Masked One?” the thief complains. “Does some vestige of loyalty for mortals remain within you?”

“Quiet,” spits the masked one. “Have you no honor?”

“What a human thing to say. It’s true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Give my father’s face back,” Katara says, trying to keep her voice level. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

“He trespassed. It’s mine.”

“He didn’t trespass. He-”

A hush falls over the room, and Katara sees the mist suddenly thicken and congeal around them all, a figure emerging from the depths. First a wide-brimmed hat, laden with gossamer cloth, then pale shoulders painted in swirls of rich red. A pendant at her chest rings faintly in the reverent silence of the room. She walks- no, glides forward, and the spirits part for her. The room smells of saltwater, or jasmine, of blood.

The real Painted Lady has arrived.

“What is the commotion here?” she speaks quietly, her voice reverberating softly in the gloom.

“This dirty little human impersonated you, Lady,” one of the spirits says with scorn. “As if she could hope to achieve your power!”

The Painted Lady says nothing. Katara is so afraid that she is rooted to the ground, her tongue suddenly leaden. It is one thing to face spirits you have not wronged. It is another thing entirely to face the ones that you have. There was a reason that her mother had chosen this spirit, of all others, to scare other spirits away.

“This type of insolence cannot go unpunished,” someone insists. Katara is too afraid to pay attention. What type of wrath does the Painted Lady have in store for her?

“Let’s give her to Koh.”

“Let’s give her to _Vaatu._ ”

“I plead mercy,” says the moon spirit. Her voice is sad and low, like a last whisper before one falls asleep. “She has lost much to us.”

Katara wonders how much this spirit has been watching over her. _How long have you known me?_

The baboon scoffs. “Oh, you _would_ say that. You _helped_ her.”

The Painted Lady turns her head to look at the moon spirit, although her face is not visible from beneath the hat. “Is that true, Yue?”

 _Yue._ A human’s name. A girl’s name.

Yue looks away momentarily. “I did not want her to fall to Koh, as her father did.”

A deep hiss, from behind her. “Meddler!”

“You know she has transgressed against us,” the Painted Lady continues, her voice difficult to read. “You know she has transgressed against _me._ ”

Yue does not say anything.

“You brought her here,” the Painted Lady says decisively. “Therefore, you shall choose her punishment.”

“Lady!” Yue protests. “I only meant-”

“You have a role in her transgressions. You encouraged her. Take responsibility.”

There is no malice or hatred in the Painted Lady’s voice. Only authority.

Yue seems like she’ll argue further, then abruptly cuts herself off. “Yes, Lady.”

Katara watches as she loses her only ally. _Even you?_ She is well and truly alone.

Yue turns to her.

“Koh will return your father’s face, and I will guide him home,” she says, as if seeing her in a new light. “But at a price. In return, you must stay here, in this palace, with the Blue Spirit. You are to be his bride.”

Multiple people’s voices rise up in protest.

“I have nothing to do with this!” the masked one yells, his voice contorted in rage. “Don’t bring me into your games!”

“I will not give the face back!” yowls the horrible voice from behind her. “It is rightfully mine!”

The Painted Lady raises a hand. “I will have silence here.”

The Blue Spirit, for that seems to be his name, does not silence himself. “It is not my fault she stupidly decided to trespass. Don’t dump her on me!”

Yue gives him an annoyed look, like he is a stubborn toddler. “If she leaves the palace grounds, she is yours to pursue, Koh. But within these grounds, she is safe.” Yue turns to her. “You have a choice. You can leave, right now, but your father will spend what little of his days here. Or you can stay here with the Blue Spirit, and your father will return safely to your people, but you will not be able to go with him. It is your choice.”

Katara knows, deep down, that the Painted Lady choosing Yue to pick her punishment was an act of profound mercy. What Katara had done to deserve such benevolence, she does not know. Perhaps this is only a setup for greater pain in future. Right now, however, Katara cannot think. She is faced with two impossible choices, and each is as painful as the first.

She knows she cannot leave her father here, among these monsters. She is not Sokka; she cannot put aside matters of the heart. She doesn’t have it in her to leave anyone, let alone her father, to die such a painful and terrifying death.

But the thought of never seeing her village again…she thinks of Sokka’s laughter, of the smell of Suki’s hair, of her father’s hugs. She thinks of all the people who love her, who miss her. She thinks of Silla, imagines him waiting for her to come home. She had has suspicions that he was a bender like her. Now, however, she will never find out.

“I will stay,” Katara says waveringly. “Please, let my father go.”

Yue closes her eyes. “Now, Koh.”

Koh lets out a deep hiss. Katara feels something just brush past her, and closes her eyes. She feels lips brush the shell of her ear.

“I will not have you today, sweet girl,” she hears him whisper. “But one day that pretty face will be mine. Remember it.”

“Get on with it, Koh,” she hears the Painted Lady order.

“Of course, Lady,” Koh says sweetly, and Katara hears the smile in his voice. She shudders.

She hears something glide in the direction of her father’s bed.

“Open your eyes,” she hears Yue say softly. Katara inches them open, and almost sobs. Her father’s face is back, and Koh is nowhere to be found. For a second, her father blinks, gasps air, uncomprehending, before he shoots up, turning to Katara with desperation.

“Katara, go back,” he begs. “Leave me here. Please, go back-”

Katara can feel the tears forming in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Katara!” her father shouts, reaching for her, even as the Painted Lady raises an arm. “Katara, no-”

And then the Painted Lady makes a gesture like waterbending, and her father is gone.

 _Don’t cry,_ she tells herself. _Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry._

“It is done,” the Painted Lady says. “Welcome to your new home, Katara, daughter of Kya and Hakoda.”

Katara bites back her tears. “I- I’m sorry, Lady. For- for what it’s worth.”

The Painted Lady says nothing.

“I can’t _believe this,”_ snarls the Blue Spirit, stalking forward. “You’ve no right to this. You want to keep me here forever, do you not? Have I not been punished enough?”

“You will do as you’re told,” the Painted Lady says, with the slightest of contempt. “We have not forgotten your transgressions, masked one, even if you have. Even after years of atonement, you still do not understand your lowest weakness.”

The Blue Spirit makes a wrathful sound, and the candle in Katara’s lantern flares bright, before going back down. It is almost like he is threatening the Painted Lady. He is imposing, scary, in his own way, but even Katara the newcomer has enough wherewithal to know that he is powerless against her. He lives according to her will.

“Let us not tarry,” the Painted Lady says, and one by one, the spirits disperse. Some of them are laughing. Katara feels numb, except for her eyes. They burn as she stares at the blackened, sooty floor.

She will spend the rest of her life in this miserable, ashen place, with nobody but this monster for a husband.

She does not know Yue is still there until she says her name.

“Katara,” Yue says softly. “Listen to me.”

She sets a glowing hand on her shoulder, and it feels like soft feathers. Katara shrugs it away, blinking back angry tears. For some reason, Yue’s betrayal had struck her the hardest.

“Leave me be,” Katara grits out. “You led me to my demise.”

“You didn’t leave me much of a choice,” Yue laughs a little feebly. “I did my best with what I was given. I tried to spare you the worst of it. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

“ _Spare me?_ Spare me what? Death? Death is preferable to spending eternity in this- this _center of decay_.”

“I know what it’s like to make a choice to leave the ones you love,” Yue presses on. “It gets easier, over time, when you know they’re happy. When you know they’re safe.”

“Well I’ll never know that, will I?” Katara says, whirling to her. “I am to spend my days with _him_ instead.”

“He’s not so bad,” Yue says quietly. “He has a temper, and makes mistakes, but he is not cruel.”

“You picked this punishment for a reason,” Katara insists. “Why?”

Yue looks uncomfortable. “You must know in your own time.” Katara makes a sound of exasperation and turns away. “Wait. Know this, at least. You will be able to leave safely under one condition: with an act of selfless love.”

It was, without a doubt, the most ridiculous thing Katara had ever heard. “ _What.”_

Suddenly, behind them, someone erupts into bitter, derisive laughter. Katara and Yue both turn to see the Blue Spirit there, hands fisted at his sides, watching them with pure disgust.

“Is there something funny to you, Blue Spirit?” Yue asks.

“I see where this is going,” the Blue Spirit says, between mean bouts of laughter. “You never tire of this, do you, Yue.”

“I don’t think this is amusing.”

“We’re not dolls for you to play with,” the Blue Spirit spat. “And I’m not going to be a part of your game if it _kills_ me.”

“Perish, then!” Yue says angrily, at the end of her tether.

Katara does not know what they’re talking about. She watches as the Blue Spirit stalks away.

“So this is the man you’ve damned me to marry,” Katara says drily. She is feeling curiously numb now.

Yue kneads her forehead. “I’m trying my best,” she says, almost to herself. She finally looks up. “I cannot dawdle long. Take care, Katara. And whatever you do, _do not leave the palace.”_

In a flash of light, Yue disappears. For a few minutes, Katara stands there alone, as flakes of ash drift down from the ceiling. Then she sits down, wraps her arms around her knees, and cries.

She will never see her family again. She will never see her home again. She will be wed to a _spirit,_ and a spirit who despises her, at that. Her life has been ruined forever, and the worst part of it all is that there is nobody to blame.

If she went back, she would do it again, and again, if it meant bringing her father back. But she hates it. She doesn’t know when her life went so wrong- was it when the winter struck? Was it when she had watched the hunting party disappear into the Forest?

 _No,_ she thinks. _It is the day that spirit attacked, and Mom was lost forever._

She is so engrossed in her misery that she does not register the faint shuffling behind her, the subtle _clink, clink_ of ceramic on the ground.

“I apologize for your situation, Miss…Katara, is it?” murmured the voice of an elderly man from behind her.

Katara turned around, searching for who had spoken. She saw nobody there. For some reason, however, there was just a single teapot sitting there in the middle of the doorway.

“Is someone there?” she called out into the emptiness.

“I am right here, dear girl,” the voice said a bit resignedly.

“Is this one of your tricks, spirit?” Katara stood up, suddenly mad. “Have you not tortured me enough?”

“I promise you, I am doing nothing of the sort,” the voice said.

“Show yourself!” she demanded.

“I’m right here.”

“Where are you, then? All I see is this stupid teapot!”

“Miss Katara, I _am_ the teapot.”

Katara blinks. “Pardon?”

The teapot, by some freak phenomenon, physically shifts itself nearer to her. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Iroh.”

Katara is at a loss for words. “You’re…a teapot. A walking, talking teapot.”

“Evidently, yes.”

Katara sits back down, and puts her head in her hands.

She hears the teapot clink closer. “It is a shock, I know. It took some getting used to for me, too.”

“You’re not a spirit?”

“No, I am afraid not,” Iroh says, very normally, like they are talking about the weather. “Nor was I always a teapot, but that is a story for another time.”

“Do you-” Katara swallows. “Do you know the Blue Spirit? The spirit who owns this place.”

“Oh, yes, definitely!” Iroh says, as if delighted that she has brought him up. “He is my nephew.”

The spirit with a teapot for an uncle. She didn’t even know spirits could _have_ uncles.

“I suppose that makes us soon-to-be kin,” Iroh continues.

_Oh, no._

“Right,” Katara says miserably.

“I’m sure you don’t want to stay in this terrible room,” Iroh said kindly. “Let me lead you somewhere warmer to stay.”

“The whole place isn’t like this?”

“Only this wing,” Iroh says agreeably as she gets up and makes to follow him out. “Zu- the Blue Spirit and I have worked quite a bit on making this place somewhat livable in the past years we have lived here.”

“So you found this place,” Katara realizes. “I thought the Blue Spirit was the one who burned it down. He seems to have…an influence on fire.”

“Yes, he is a firebender,” Iroh says, a note of pride entering his voice. “I taught him myself.”

Katara tries to ignore the logistics of a teapot firebending teacher, because it makes her head ache. “I thought spirits couldn’t bend.”

Iroh makes a dismissive sound.

“Why are you a teapot?” Katara ventured.

“The spirits have an excellent sense of humor!” Iroh says good-naturedly. “Of all the things in the world, they turned me into what I love the most. There is nothing in the world that cannot be solved by some well-brewed tea, in my opinion.”

They had been walking across the palace, past dilapidated rooms and closed doors, until Iroh stops at one door that seems stronger, sturdier than the rest. Katara takes his cue and nudges it open. In it, the room is almost magically clean, with a blazing hearth and a neatly made bed.

“There is a washroom next door,” Iroh tells her. “Please, make yourself at home.”

He leaves her, thankfully, for Katara does not know how much more she can take. Wordlessly, she takes a few steps forward and pitches forward onto the bed, just managing to throw her hat to the side. She is exhausted to her bones.

With some small vestige of hope that this might just be some sort of strange nightmare, she slips into a deep and dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has left comments or kudos! I am really enjoying this fic, and I hope you are enjoying too. Hopefully, I'll be able to update more frequently, so stay tuned! And don't hesitate to drop by my tumblr @iskindiriya !

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'll try to update regularly and keep things engaging! Come scream at me at my tumblr: @iskindiriya. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are the fuel that keeps my own lantern lit, so please leave some! 😊 I hope you will enjoy this fic as much as I have enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Also this is dedicated to my friend Maria, who inspired this.


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